


Such Selfish Prayers

by Engineer104



Series: Beyond Fodlan - Fantastical Felannie Week [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Angst with a Happy Ending, Animal Death (Off-screen), Blood and Violence, F/M, Fluff, Human Sacrifice, Humor, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:00:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23574262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: Years ago Annette's village received a prophecy that the war overwhelming them would only end once war found peace. Naturally, they decided they ought to sacrifice a maiden to the god of war every spring.This year, it's Annette's turn, and in the name of peace she's determined to seduce a god that refuses to be seduced.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Series: Beyond Fodlan - Fantastical Felannie Week [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1692961
Comments: 16
Kudos: 137
Collections: FantasyFelannieWeek2020





	Such Selfish Prayers

**Author's Note:**

> For Fantastical Felannie Week, Day 2: Gods/Myth! (Yes, I know this is my second fic for this day shhh)
> 
> okay so uh you may have noticed i rated this higher than usual. please mind my **warning:** there is implied/referenced **rape** as well as the **threat** of it. i promise **NO ONE** actually gets raped during the fic!! but the **threat** is there, so if you find that off-putting you might want to skip this one. also uh there is blood/violence because Felix IS a god of _war_ but you know how that goes right?
> 
> ANYWAY, title is from the Florence + the Machine song "Bedroom Hymns" ~~i know that's more Christian-based shhh~~. Please enjoy the fic!

The oracle spoke on the night of the full moon. Her temple stood over a volcanic vent near enough the coast that the crashing of waves could be heard from within. Harsh, stinking fumes drifted from beneath her altar while moonlight shone on her bare shoulders through a crack rent in the cavernous ceiling from a quake decades or centuries or eons ago.

Sulfurous fumes escaped her parted lips and her eyes glowed green. She lifted a finger and pointed across the altar while an unnatural wind tore at her hair and said, _“This war…this infernal war that rages without end.”_

“C-Can it end?” The village leader knelt at the base of the altar, hands clasped as if in prayer - and to the oracle he offered his. “Please, surely there is some way. The gods above cannot wish for this war.”

 _“Can’t they?”_ The oracle’s voice echoed throughout the temple as she stepped down from her altar. _“Prithee tell, mortal, what you know of the gods’ will.”_

“I-I—maybe I can’t,” the village leader conceded with a sigh. “My own brother devoted himself to studying Seiros’ scrolls, but even he is at a loss, so please…my village is a battleground between both armies even as we speak.”

The oracle appraised him without a trace of kindness in her solid green stare. _“No conflict lasts forever,”_ she pronounced at last, _“though many end when all parties are dead.”_

The village leader sucked in a breath, as if to take in the same dizzying fumes that gave the oracle her visions. “But—”

 _“This one…oh, yes, I see now.”_ The oracle’s lips - usually flat and without expression, with nary a smile or a frown - curled into something resembling a smirk. _“The war will end only when War knows peace.”_

And the village leader despaired, because how could war know such a thing as peace?

* * *

Every year the village sacrifices a maiden to appease an apparently insatiable god of war. The maiden leaves with her head held high, though tears roll down her cheeks and stain her eyes red, dressed in a simple lilac tunic belted with gold. Barefoot she walks through the village while her family and friends and petty rivals and neighbors shower her with gifts of food - whatever they can still spare after decades of war. All of it she takes as she delves into the valley, beginning the long trek to the temple of the god of war.

“She’ll bring us peace,” they say every year. “She’ll appease him.”

Little do they know the god of war is not a creature of lust, not like earthly men. No maiden can please him in the temple or beyond, should the maiden even find him.

If the soldiers don’t find them first.

(No maiden returns to the village, though the god of war takes not a single one.)

Much of this weighs on Annette’s mind as she clutches her basket of bread and fruit and shivers. Spring has only just come to the valley, but the evening breeze bites as sharp as winter. It tugs at her tunic and tangles the fabric in her legs, and she stumbles against it.

Well, if only the chill is the only reason for Annette’s shivering. The further she descends into the valley, the closer she draws to the temple, and the closer she draws to the temple…

He must be fearsome to be a god of war, Annette thinks. She only hopes he’ll demand to know why she dares trespass in his temple before he runs her through with a sword.

If he makes demands, she _might_ be able to talk him out of killing her. Maybe she can…seduce him…or something…like she’s…supposed to.

The thought makes her stomach twist. How does one seduce anyone anyway, much less a god? Will she have to try dancing for him, or can she simply rest a hand on his arm and smile in that coquettish manner every girl in the village but her seems to master?

Maybe this is what she should’ve asked her uncle when he took her aside and, in a heavy voice, announced she would be this year’s sacrifice.

Instead, she wondered, “Does this mean I can have some honey?”

(It did. Small comfort, really, especially since her appetite diminishes with every step she takes - and the god of war might know if she finished all the honey without sharing! - and she doubts she can eat a single spoonful.)

The sight of the temple emerging from the trees fills her stomach with the worst sort of butterflies. Or snakes. Or writhing, freshly caught fish. Or perhaps even—

Well, Annette thinks she wants to vomit, but she doubts that will make her any more attractive to the god of war she’s probably supposed to seduce.

The temple isn’t as grand as she expects, not that she really knew _what_ to expect or if a god of war would even decorate his dwelling. Cracks lace the columns and mildew and moss stain the stone with ivy crawling up and nearly covering the roof. If not for the intricate carvings along the roof and the smooth white stone she might’ve walked right up the stairs without noticing.

Her footsteps reverberate throughout the temple, its interior far darker than outside. Dust stirs with every step, billowing into the air and tickling her nose.

When Annette sneezes, it echoes through the silent temple. Her heart seizes in her chest, her feet freezing in place, and all she can do is stare helplessly as a shadow shifts across the dirty floor.

“Spring already?” a voice calls from a raised dais. A figure crouches in a beam of sunlight that streams through a crack in the ceiling, motes of dust swimming and drifting through the air.

Annette approaches the figure. Her heart pounds a syncopated beat in her throat, and her blood rushes past her ears so loudly she doubts she’ll hear another spoken word. But she doesn’t let the fear paralyze her, only grips her basket of food tighter.

A young man sits in the sunlight. His pale skin seems to glow silver in its light, his eyes the burnt brass of the shields the soldiers that steal into the village carry. He wears a ragged tunic under a breastplate, and a gleaming white sword lies across his lap. A shield is strapped to his arm, as if any moment he’ll don a helmet over his dark hair and join the armies always bearing down on her village.

A man, Annette thinks, though fearsome he may be, not a god.

But there is something…unnatural about him, something that fills her body with tension and makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She can’t identify it, not until his copper eyes land on her and he unwinds his limbs to stand in one smooth motion.

It’s warm, almost humid, inside the temple, yet still Annette shivers.

She bows low - ones bows when they meet a god, right? - and raises her basket of food. “I, um, I brought you sustenance…my lord,” she tells him, pleased her voice mostly holds steady.

She dares to peek up at him, watching him lift the cloth cover. She holds her breath - he stands so close she can see his toes peeking from his sandals - and counts to ten, then to twenty, then—

“I care not for the foodstuffs of mortals,” he scoffs.

Annette scowls before swallowing her irritation. “I suppose you don’t, uh, _have_ to eat it,” she assures him. “Can I…can I stand upright? My back hurts.”

“No one asked you to bow,” he says. He turns and paces away from her. “State what you want from me. I have elsewhere to be.”

Annette stands, rubbing her aching back, though disbelief clings to her. Is it really…that easy? Did he really just ask her what she wants?

Can it really be _that easy_?

But no…surely there must be a catch, a trick, a trap. The gods are never so simple to read, just like the oracle’s prophecies, and for all she knows he’ll hear her out before saying he’ll grant her a wish if she submits to some inane quest that will kill her.

He stands on the dais with his arms crossed, foot tapping impatiently. He doesn’t smile - not that Annette really expected a god of _war_ to smile, but still, a small and encouraging one might’ve been nice to settle the nerves writhing in her gut.

She steps a little closer to the dais, until her toes brush the bottom step. He just looks down at her, and though he doesn’t meet her eyes she can feel the judgment in his.

He sighs, and Annette realizes she’s taking too long. “What do you want?” he demands then.

“I, well, I’m here to ask you to please end the war!” she pushes out in a rush. “Two armies keep clashing near my village. They kidnap boys and force them to fight for them. They kidnap girls and force them to work for their soldiers or—or worse. And they’re pillaging our crops and stealing from our tradesmen and keeping merchants from reaching us!” She pauses for breath, her heart aching at their plight, at the bloodshed and how she _must_ stop it even if it means giving herself to a bloodthirsty god. “Please…” She kneels at the base of the dais, a lump sticking in her throat. “End the war, please.”

The god appraises her for so long Annette dares to think she might succeed.

And then he pronounces, “No.”

She jerks her head up to stare at him. “ _No_?”

“No.” His hand falls to the hilt of his sword, his gaze faraway as a frown twists his lips. “I refused your mortal food because it does not sustain me like battle.”

Annette’s jaw drops. Horror fills her, but anger is not far behind. “But that—that’s selfish!” she snaps. “Then this war—it only benefits _you_!”

“I did not start this war,” the god retorts with far less ire than she expects. In fact, he sounds almost…resigned. “You mortals start your wars and fuel your conflicts; I only watch them and feed from them.”

The basket tumbles from her arms. Its contents fall from it, a pomegranate rolling until it stops against Annette’s feet. But she barely notes it, too busy staring at the callous god before her. “You’re _evil_!” she accuses. She bends over to pick up the pomegranate before tucking her arm back and lobbing it right at the god on his dais.

He catches it in one hand with a resounding smack before dropping it. “Maybe so,” he agrees. He grabs his helmet from where it sits on the floor and settles it on his head. “I am needed elsewhere. When I return, it should be to a vacant temple.”

“No, no, _no_!” Annette launches herself onto the dais and, throwing all caution to the nonexistent wind, latches onto his arm.

His…rather muscular arm. Which really should not surprise her; of course the god of war would have muscular arms!

He jerks his head around to glare at her, so sharply Annette wonders if he can actually smite her like that. But she refuses to let it cow her - regardless of the fear freezing her blood to ice - and meets his eyes.

Is she imagining the lightning sparking in his irises? Is she imagining the heat of his flesh - _flesh_? - rising under her grip?

“Unhand me,” he says in a low, dangerous voice that sends a shiver up her spine.

“No.”

He leans towards her, so close his breath - gods breathe? - skates across her cheek. “If you do not unhand me, I will force you to,” he mutters, “and if I must force you, you will get hurt.”

“Ooh, how scary!” Annette sneers, because by the _gods_ her anger and frustration overpower her fear and reason. “You’ll _hurt_ me! Please, threaten me more, god of _war_ , I can’t imagine you actually care if you—”

The words die in her throat when his fingers close around her wrist, all but the humiliating and frightened squeak that escape her lips. “You will unhand me,” he insists, “and then you will leave and return to your pathetic village, or I will snap your arm.”

He means it, Annette realizes. Of course he means it, and maybe it’s not as bad as his sword piercing her chest like she fretted on the trek to the temple, but it’s just enough that she forces her stiff fingers to loosen their grip before letting his arm go.

She sighs in relief when he drops her wrist and steps away. “I’m not leaving though,” she tells him, because dammit all she has a reason to be here! “You—you don’t scare me!”

“You should fear me,” he tells her. “Sane men do.”

“Well, I’m not a man!” Annette retorts. She rests her hands on her hips and leans towards him again, intent. “And maybe I’m not sane either! But you—I’m going to—to seduce you!”

His eyes threaten to pop from his skull at her announcement. “What?”

“Y-you heard me!” She curses herself for stuttering when she needs all her wits about her for this. She steps towards him a little - trying not to be put out by him stepping away, like she’s a dangerous beast that makes him wary - and adds, “I am a sacrifice, so here I am, willing for you to—”

“Every other village maiden who presented herself to me as a sacrifice agreed to leave as soon as I demanded it,” the god of war interrupts, his eyes no less wide and shocked. “Why do _you_ insist on lingering?”

“Because I—what?” Annette’s own eyes widen in surprise. “You sent them away?”

“Yes…” He blinks at her, his demeanor in sharp contrast from when she grabbed him. “Do they not return?”

“N-no!” Annette turns her back to him, her heart constricting in her chest then. Every other girl he sent back…but none of them returned. What happened to them?

And—and if they _had_ returned, then the village would’ve known that sending a maiden the next year would be fruitless. Is she really just—is there a reason for her to be here? _Should_ she leave and return to the village?

No, because if she does return, she would have to report her failure to her uncle, report that every time they sacrificed a maiden proved not only unnecessary but also…useless.

And Annette _hates_ being useless.

“Well, when _you_ return,” the god continues, utterly oblivious to her inner turmoil, “tell your village that I have no interest in the maidens they send every year. If they wish to appease a god with flesh, they should send them to Sylvain’s temple.”

To… _whose_ temple?

“I can only be appeased with blood,” he says, “and only battle will sate me.”

“Well, fine then.” Annette crosses her arms and, mustering from deep within herself some ability to attempt to seem attractive, bats her eyelashes at him. “But I have a task here, and I will see it through!”

The god eyes her for a long moment in which her heart pounds a little faster. But then he rolls his eyes and says, “As you like, but do not expect me to care for you.”

With that he vanishes in a swish of his tunic and a hiss of flame, leaving nothing behind but the scent of smoke, metal, and, curiously, cinnamon.

* * *

The temple, Annette realized before she even set foot inside, is _filthy_. Weeds sprout from every crack in the stone that sunlight falls on (through more cracks in the ceiling), dust and dirt coat every altar, every surface, and shards of crockery lie…well, almost everywhere. The air itself is thick and musty with humidity and the scent of mold and mildew, so much that Annette wonders how the god of war can even breathe it in.

Does he even need to breathe? Do gods need to breathe? Well, Annette needs to breathe, so while she hatches her plan to seduce its master, she busies herself by cleaning the temple.

The enormity of the task threatens to overwhelm her from the very beginning when a stubborn weed resists her efforts to free it from the dirt. She tugs and tugs so hard she falls backwards, the cracked ceiling spinning above her. She squints against a piercing ray of sunlight, raising her hand to shade her eyes…right as another shadow falls across her.

The god rests his hands on his hips and wonders, “Is there any particular reason you lie on the floor?”

“Yes, there is!” Annette bolts upright, clutching at her head at a wave of dizziness, and says, “Your temple is _disgusting_. How in your own damn name do you live like this?”

A thin black brow rises almost to his hairline. “And you propose to clean it by…lying down?”

“No!” Annette throws a rag - the cloth from her food basket with a new purpose - at him. It wraps around his face, and she derives a profound satisfaction from him picking it off. “I demand proper…supplies! A broom, for starters, or at least the materials to make one myself.”

He stares at the cloth, a slight pout - that looks quite odd and out of place on the god of _war_ \- on his lips. “I do not require a pristine temple,” he tells her. “You need not bother.”

“Well, _I_ require it!” Annette insists. “If I’m to reside here for however long it takes for me to end the war, then I would rather not live in filth.” She crosses her arms and nods, pleased with her own reasoning, though the fact that he’s standing over her while she sits brings a rush of embarrassed heat to her face.

He sighs. “Woman, I told you—”

“My name is Annette,” she says, “and I would prefer you call me that.” She jumps to her feet - not that it helps _much_ with staring him down as he towers over her by more than a head - and leans towards him. “And by what should I call you? Surely your name isn’t just ‘god of war’.”

His gaze comes closer to meeting hers than it had on the day she set foot in the temple. “It is…not,” he admits, “though few bother to use anything else.”

“So…?”

“Felix,” he says in a tone that, if Annette didn’t know any better, she might call _shy_. “If you must, call me Felix.”

An unwitting smile - of satisfaction that she’s finally gotten one thing that she wants from him - pushes at her lips. “Thank you,” she says, “Felix. Now…please help me gather what I need to tidy up the temple.” Her heart jumps into her throat as she dares to rest a hand on his elbow, the memory of how he reacted when she grabbed him fresh on her mind. “If I’m to seduce you here, I’d prefer it be clean.”

Felix’s arm stiffens under her touch. He pulls away and _looks_ away, and the latter action almost hurts more than anything else he might’ve done. “I will gather what you need if you compose a list,” he agrees, “but do not think for a moment you will succeed in your…task.”

His footsteps echo through the temple - just as hers did on the day she arrived. Annette watches him go with her heart sinking and wonders how she’ll accomplish what she came for with him so resistant.

 _Men only want one thing,_ the priest - a man himself, Annette never failed to notice the irony - in her village always affirmed before an officer from one of the armies with an eagle painted on his shield dragged him away for daring to preach to his men.

Well, she thinks, the priest’s logic might not apply to gods.

* * *

After Annette finishes the last morsel from her sacrificial food basket, Felix returns from one of his daily excursions with game.

She can feel the blood draining from her face just as the buck’s blood drips from its carcass, a single arrow sticking out of its neck almost proudly. “Um…” Her wide eyes slide past the deer to land on its hunter, who holds it up by its bleeding neck with one hand as if it weighs little more than a kitten.

“Well?” he prompts her, shaking the carcass just enough more blood splatters on stone floors she _just_ cleaned to a shine. He balances a cruel, curved hunting bow against one shoulder. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t even look especially proud at his kill, just impassive and expectant and…

Hopeful?

Annette decides she imagines that glint in his copper eyes, because it’s far easier to dismiss it as a figment conjured by her startled thoughts than it is to focus on the fact that he returned with a dead deer the day after she finished her rations.

For some reason, the only thing Annette can muster to say is, “I don’t really like venison…”

“Unfortunate,” Felix says, and do his eyebrows draw together into something that _might_ be disappointment?

A sardonic laugh bubbles out of Annette’s throat. She can’t help her amusement at this, at this god who need not eat but, despite his general callousness, pays enough attention to her that he noticed that she no longer has food. She covers her mouth to muffle another giggle, struggling to compose herself, until she can finally choke out, “Uh, um, Felix, why did you…hunt a buck?”

He lowers the deer - is its weight finally getting to him? - and frowns. “You require sustenance, do you not?”

Annette’s jaw drops. How is _this_ the same god who insisted she leave his temple? “I, well, yes, I do, but I had—”

“You finished your own provisions yesterday,” Felix reminds her. “I overheard you singing—”

“ _S-Singing_?” Annette stutters. She covers her mouth, horror filling her and turning her stomach. “Oh no…”

“—and from the words I realized that you must be hungry. Stacks of steaks and cakes, was it?”

She clutches at her head, her face so hot she thinks it might actually be aflame. She curses her habit of singing while she works, curses herself for spinning her moods into lyrics. And she thought she was so careful, making sure she never had an audience, only for him to reveal himself after the fact.

And who knows how many times he heard? Annette will have to be so much warier of eavesdroppers from now on!

“Well, thank you for noticing!” Annette finally manages to say, her voice pitching higher. “Why would you listen to me _sing_? That’s always for my ears only!”

Felix’s eyes widen. “This is my temple.”

“And that was—those are my songs!”

His lips twitch, mild interest flashing across his face. “There are other songs?”

“Yes—I mean, no!” Annette lies. She throws her hands out as if to ward him off, as if she can banish her singing from his memory. “Not for you anyway, you villain!”

His face falls. “I-I see. Does this mean you do not want the buck?”

“Uh, I don’t know!” Annette bites her lip, staring between Felix and his kill. “I don’t really…I’ve never really handled fresh, um, fresh meat before. What am I supposed to do with a whole buck?”

“Skin it?” he suggests. “If you require special tools, I can acquire those.”

She crosses her arms and sighs through her nose; some of her embarrassment dissipates in the wake of this new challenge, at least, which makes it easier to think. “I don’t know how to skin a deer,” she confesses in a low voice. “Can’t you have found me a live goat instead? I could’ve made cheese!”

Felix lowers the buck so its hooves drag across the floor. “Perhaps…”

“And maybe some fruit too while you’re at it!” Annette adds. She doesn’t really know what she’s saying anymore, just that she can’t handle a whole dead buck, doesn’t know the first thing about skinning and gutting it, much less curing and drying meat because there’s no way she’ll be able to finish it all before it spoils.

He blinks once, twice, three times. “Very well,” he says. “If the buck is not enough—”

“Wait, wait, _wait_!” Annette knows she sounds hysterical when she holds her hands up. “I was…I was joking,” she says hollowly. “Please don’t go to anymore trouble, because you’d probably uproot and bring me a whole tree!” It’s almost flattering, really! And that thought alone is enough to set her face aflame again.

“I…I see.” He tries to walk past her with the carcass slung over his shoulder, but Annette plants her hands against his (firm…) chest. He recoils from her touch - she’s not a little hurt by that, definitely not - though halts in his tracks. “What?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow at her. “You do not want the buck.”

She lowers her hands, fingers tightening around her wrist as, unable to meet his eyes, she mumbles, “I, um, it’s just…a shame for it to go to waste after you put in all that effort to hunt it…”

“Oh.” His lips quirk up into what might be a smile - Annette has her doubts - before he approaches her.

She steps back without thinking, her heart skipping a beat, but then he brandishes the carcass.

When she holds her arms out on reflex, he passes the whole buck carcass to her.

Its weight knocks the air from her lungs before she crumples to the newly bloodied floor, half-crushed under it. She shudders as its blood stains her tunic and makes it stick to her skin, wrinkling her nose at the awful metallic scent and the heavy musk lingering on its pelt.

“F-F-Felix!” Annette stutters, but he’s already walked past her, leaving her to struggle with an animal carcass on her own.

Damn him, she thinks, gritting her teeth in anger and in pain. Her arms ache with the effort of merely shoving the carcass off her, and her breath comes in sharp bursts once she’s free of its burden (and it again bleeds on the floor). The rational part of her mind reasons that Felix merely overestimated her strength, but Annette knows the truth.

He’s just punishing her for misleading him with her song.

* * *

Annette, after much tribulation, skins and guts the buck.

The ordeal leaves her with blood staining her hands up to her elbows and in need of a new tunic, as well as an upset stomach that she promptly relieves in a bush in the trees beyond the temple. She returns clutching her still aching abdomen, sticky with the buck’s blood and her own sweat and in desperate need of a bath.

And finds that Felix did, in fact, uproot a whole tree for her.

It’s twice his height, its branches heavy with red flowers without fragrance, and it lies across the path that leads into the temple.

Pomegranate, she thinks, which means she won’t even be able to eat the fruit until autumn.

Which is not the point! Annette’s heart races as she stomps her foot before tripping over its trunk and marching into the temple, never mind the bloody footprints she leaves in her wake.

“F-Felix!” If he brought a goat back too she swears to all the gods—

The sight of him crouching on the dais, his armor and tunic as bloodstained as her own clothes, pulls her up short. His shoulders are slumped, the tip of his sword driven through stone, spider cracks protruding from it. Her heart stutters against her ribs, alarmed, and she runs up the dais to kneel in front of him.

“Felix?” she says, voice low so she doesn’t startle him. “Are you—”

His head jerks up, a wild, almost thunderous look in his eyes that makes her breath catch, reminds her of the day she trespassed as a purported sacrifice and she dared to touch him and he grabbed her arm. But the menace fades as quickly as it manifested, and Annette forces herself to relax even when his knuckles turn white and he stares past her.

“Did, um…” She licks her lips, unsure if she even has a right to ask; she does spend an awful amount of time yelling at him. “Are you hurt?”

For a heartbeat she worries he didn’t hear her, that his mind is off in some faraway place - on some battlefield - and that she’ll either have to leave him or repeat herself, but then he shakes his head and mumbles, “No.”

For a moment Annette hates that she can’t tell if he’s lying. She doesn’t know him well enough, doesn’t know if he never meets her gaze because he lies or…for some other reason. Her hand hovers over his shoulder, unsure of what she can do for him, if she _can_ do anything for him.

“Then what’s…wrong?” she wonders.

He sighs. “You need not concern yourself with me.”

Annette scowls. “Why not? You invaded my privacy by listening to me sing.”

“What does this have to do with that?” Felix asks. He rolls his eyes, the action far livelier than his demeanor suggests him capable of.

“Well…I asked you a question,” Annette says, “and you owe me an answer even just for—for listening to what you weren’t meant to hear!” She leans back on her heels and crosses her arms.

He blinks at her once, twice, three times before shaking his head again. “You are a mortal,” he says. “You would not understand.”

“Oh?” She leans towards him. “Try me.”

Her eyes widen in shock when he agrees, “Very well.” He relaxes slightly, his back propped against the next step up the dais. “I was not always the god of war,” he tells the ceiling. A ray of sunlight slips through one of the cracks, tracing his long eyelashes. In that heartbeat her breath catches, and she thinks that, for the ugliness of war, this embodiment of it is beautiful.

Is this why men fight each other? Do they see something beautiful in it?

“I was a mortal once,” Felix continues. “I had a family, and friends, and—”

His words shatter the daydream. “You were _mortal_?” Annette gasps.

“It was not so long ago, I…I think.” His eyes narrow as a frown twists his lips. “Time…it confuses me now like it never did.”

Annette can almost sympathize; she tried keeping track of the days since she set foot in the temple but failed after a week.

(It might be summer, she thinks, judging by the heat of daytime and how avidly she seeks the shade and relative cool of the temple before noon.)

“When I was a young man, I left my home,” Felix explains, oblivious to her thoughts. “I hoped - perhaps foolishly - to strike out alone without my family name or friends burdening me. I rescued a priestess of Cethleann from men who meant her harm, then indulged her in a few…inane favors.” He shudders as if in some memory, and Annette supposes it must be awful indeed. She rests a hand on his shoulder, her chest twinging in sympathy, though a smile pushes at her mouth when he doesn’t shrug her away.

“Then…what happened?” she prompts.

Felix snorts and scrubs a hand over his face. “The priestess herself _was_ Cethleann.”

Annette’s jaw drops. “W-what? How can that—”

“I rescued her thinking she was just an ill-fated maiden and she granted me immortality.” He wrinkles his nose, though a smile bearing no hint of amusement rises to his face. “Cethleann hates wars, so imagine her shock when I ascended as the god of war sometime later.”

“Some…time?” Annette’s brow furrows in confusion. “What do you mean?”

Felix buries his face in his hands. His shoulder trembles under hers, and she worries that he’s crying until he says in a steady voice, “My best friend…almost from birth…dead for his own foolishness, and I could do nothing for him.” At last he shrugs her away, only to bolt to his feet and pull his sword from the crack in the dais. “I may be a god, but even I am powerless to the whims of men and their wars.”

“You…mentioned something like that once.” Annette clasps her hands together, unsure what else to do, except her own uselessness in the moment…fills her with irritation. “But I just don’t understand one thing.” She stands and faces him from one step up so they’re at eye level, and somehow - a miracle, perhaps? - he holds her gaze.

She represses a shiver at the power she finds there, lying dormant. What can he do, that she’s barely witnessed, and why won’t he do _more_?

“What do you not understand, Annette?” Felix says. He scowls again, as if speaking of his past awakened memories he prefers to keep to himself.

And for that shame bites at her, but she resists the urge to succumb to it until she has _all_ her answers. “Everyone fighting in the war prays to _you_ ,” Annette reminds him. “Everyone on both sides burns incense invoking _your_ name, begging for your favor, so how can you not affect the war?”

Felix crosses his arms. “You have your answer,” he tells her.

“What?”

“Everyone on both sides.” He rakes his fingers through hair matted with blood that she knows isn’t his though the sight still leaves a pit in her stomach. “ _All_ sides of a conflict pray to me, all sides want my favor, and they all want the same thing: victory for their own.”

“I’m not sure I understand…” Annette confesses, shaking her head.

Felix’s hand smacks against his breastplate, and the sound rings out through the temple. “All those prayers tug me in as many directions as there are prayers, so what, exactly, shall I do?”

“Favor one side?”

He shakes his head and scoffs, “It is not so easy as that. I cannot ignore the prayers of so many.”

“But by answering none, you ignore them all!” she snaps. “How does that make any sense?”

Felix’s gaze falls to his hand, curled around the hilt of his sword. “When I was still mortal,” he says, so low as if he speaks from a distance, “I thought that strength was everything and that I could prove myself and my worthiness with my sword. I am not so foolish now to think strength is all I need, or perhaps I am still as weak as I was then and that is why I cannot do as I want.”

His intense eyes flick to her, and Annette’s breath catches. “And what—what _do_ you want?”

He shakes his head and turns his back to her. “If only I knew.”

Annette crosses her arms. His non-answer infuriates her until she hears the blood pulsing past her ears, until she finds herself hissing, “Well, I have an idea!” When he glances over his shoulder at her with his eyebrow raised, she says, “Why don’t you end this damn war to find out?”

“What?” He scowls, his anger mirroring hers. “I told you—”

“You’re the god of war!” Annette rages, and she doesn’t remember ever being so angry in her life. But her frustration’s been mounting since she arrived here and found him deaf to her pleas and indifferent to her efforts, his occasional kindness be damned. “But you just told me that you reap no benefit from war!”

“Without war, no one prays to me,” he tells her.

“But you just said—”

“Somehow they and war itself sustain me at the same time they tear me apart,” Felix says. “I cannot explain how both are true; I am not an intellectual like you.”

His words strike her like a slap across the face when his eyes narrow, when his irritation with her grows apparent. Heat pricks at her eyes, and the first tear escapes and slides down her cheek.

“I don’t—don’t know why I’m even here anymore,” Annette mumbles. She sniffs and wipes furiously at the next tear, because the last thing she wants is to cry in front of _him_.

“I know not either,” Felix agrees. He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t even blink. “I never asked your village for sacrifices.”

“I-I realize…that,” she says, cursing the tremor in her voice. Her fingers fist in her tunic - still bloody after working with the buck’s carcass. “Y-you’re w-worse than a villain.”

And she has no reason to be here.

Annette understands with an awful, gut-wrenching clarity that she’s failed. She failed the instant she set out from her village with her uncle’s entreaties and blessing, the instant she thought she _could_ move a god to do as she asks, as she wants, as she _begs_ , the instant she decided she could seduce him.

She failed, and her village will suffer for it.

Annette can’t be here anymore, can’t witness the face of failure. She spins on her heel and runs.

Her footsteps thunder against stone before she stumbles over the pomegranate tree lying across her path. But she doesn’t heed it as an obstacle and plows ahead, pushing into the forest with her chest aching and tears flowing from her eyes unhindered.

Only when she slows, blanketed with the shadows of the trees, does she worry about how her uncle will greet her when she confesses to her failure.

She stops when a creek crosses her path, crouching at its bank to scrub the blood from her skin and the salt from her face, but it does little for the lump stuck in her throat. She scowls at her red-eyed reflection on the surface, rippling and distorted and…lonely.

How will they receive her at home anyway? And who will still be alive to meet her?

Annette sniffs and stands, bracing herself against a tree trunk for balance and raising her gaze to the path ahead.

Metal slides under her chin and a rough hand claps over her mouth to muffle a choked scream.

Her heart pounds against her ribs as she struggles against the grip tightening on her, but before she can consider biting the hand, the blade against her throat bites first.

Warm blood trickles down her neck. Annette whimpers, fear petrifying her even before hot breath tickles her ear and a deep voice says, “That’s it. Be a good _sacrifice_ , and we won’t hurt you…much.”

Annette then understands what became of every other maiden her village sent on her way.

* * *

The soldiers that capture her bear round shields with black eagles painted on them, identifying their origin and their army, which, Annette decides, doesn’t really matter. It never did matter which army fought for the more “righteous” cause when both harass her village and steal their crops and kidnap their boys, and it doesn’t matter now that they tie her up like she’s a sheep they’re taking to market.

Well, shearing her for wool isn’t the worst they can do to her.

She tries reasoning with them first, insisting that the village sacrificed her to the god of war, that snatching her means incurring his wrath (never mind that the god of war cares little for her or her sacrifice), but they only laugh.

“You think you’re the first girl to tell us that?” one soldier jeers. He has her slung over his shoulder, carrying her like the sad, sorry sack she is, leaving her face burning with humiliation.

Never mind shearing; she’s a sheep being carted off to slaughter.

Hammering her feet against her captor’s chest works against her when his comrade binds her ankles together, and spewing curses and swearing vengeance and whatever other dramatic nonsense rises to her thoughts gets her a gag.

She spits around it when the cloth tugs at her lips, sick with revulsion when the soldier strokes her hair back from her face with an awful, unwanted tenderness. “I think you’ll have a bath before we have you,” he tells her.

Annette wants to punch him, to crush her fist into his nose until she hears a satisfying crunch of bone. She wants to castrate him until he squeals like a stuck pig. She wants to spit in his eyes until he goes blind and can’t look at her with that ugly, dreadful intensity that fills her with nausea and dread.

But she can’t, because she’s tied up, gagged, and useless.

Useless…how can she be so _useless_?

“Do you think this one found her god of war?” the other soldier asks. His nose is crooked as if someone else managed to break it, and Annette thinks that she hopes whoever it was gets everything they want in life and in death.

“Maybe she did,” the one carrying her says. “See how she’s bloodied? He can’t be a gentle lover.”

“Ah, but not a wound on her,” observes the other. “Just that spot on her neck where you nicked her.”

“Well, I can’t blame a god for turning her away,” says the first. He jostles her until the ground beneath them spins and Annette worries she may actually be sick. “I imagine he has higher standards than a skinny thing like her.”

Annette doesn’t know if she’d rather vomit or sob, though if she vomits perhaps they’ll grow disgusted enough to toss her aside.

(Though with the way her day’s been, soldiers from the _other_ army would probably come across her.)

“So…peace again?” one of the soldiers wonders, and only when the other doesn’t reply does Annette realize he addresses her.

Not that she can answer considering the gag stuck in her mouth.

“Maybe even an end to this war?” the other prompts before they both burst into guffaws that grate on her ears. She scowls, waiting for them to quiet - wishing she can quiet them herself - until he says, “I never did understand why that weak little village sacrificed their girls to the god of _war_. Shouldn’t they send them to the god of peace?”

“What god of peace is there?” his fellow says, snorting. “You would need peace for a god of peace.”

“True enough,” he says. “A pity then, but that village’s loss is our gain.”

Annette hears the sounds of a war camp long before she sees it. The shouts of men rise over it, alongside the hammering against anvils repairing and forging weapons and the sizzling of campfires. She squirms in the soldier’s grasp, her heart pounding faster, but for her trouble he grabs her hair and tugs until her scalp burns.

She whimpers, a few tears escaping from the corners of her eyes, as he hisses, “You’ll behave.”

 _Or what?_ Annette thinks. What worse can they do to her that they haven’t already promised?

They reach the edge of the trees - still some distance from the camp - around sunset. Shadows stretch long across the field - lying fallow when years ago her village would’ve planted - between the forest and camp.

The soldiers pause, and Annette’s heart skips a beat.

“Well, what do you think?” the one holding her asks his companion.

“About…?”

“If we report to camp now,” he explains, “we’ll have to share her.”

Annette freezes, her thoughts grinding to a halt except for the singular repeating refrain of _no_.

“Didn’t you want to get her a bath?” his comrade wonders. “You’re right, she stinks of blood - and the gods know what she was crazed enough to kill wandering all by herself - and she won’t be much fun like that.

_No_ _…no…no!_

“We’ll give her a dunk in the stream,” the other suggests. “We’d be doing her a favor; she might even thank us!”

She swings her bound legs, heedless of any consequences except escaping this new and impending danger. Her arms thrash against her captor’s back, but then her head spins when he tosses her away and pins her against a tree with one large, rough hand trapping her wrists.

“I think she’s getting impatient,” he says, sneering. “She doesn’t seem to even want that dunk.”

Annette winces, turning her head away from him and his rancid breath. Maybe now is the time to vomit, convince them she has the plague or worse, that she’s disgusting and sick and they’ll suffer for touching her.

She meets the soldier’s eyes then, ignoring her discomfort, ignoring the rope chafing at her wrists, defiant as she tries to spit, “L-l-l—”

His eyes widen with shock, and for a heartbeat Annette dares to think she intimidated him.

Until something warm and wet splashes against her chest, a dark liquid bubbling at the corner of his mouth. His eyes widen in shock, and when Annette looks down the bloody tip of a sword protrudes from his chest.

“H-h-h—”

His grip on Annette slackens. She wrenches her wrists from him and falls in a heap at the base of the tree trunk right as he slides off the sword.

Felix stands over his body, murder written all over his face in his scowl, in the tension in his jaw and the lightning sparking in his darkened eyes. Annette finds herself shrinking away from him even as he turns his back to her.

“You—you’ll pay for that!” the other soldier bellows, raising his shield and crouching with a spear in hand. He charges.

It ends between two blinks of her eyes. Felix knocks his spear aside with his own shield before plunging his sword through his neck.

He dares to look shocked, to try to shape his lips around a curse even as he falls from the sword, twitching until his life fades.

A shudder wracks Annette’s body. She watches, half-numb, as Felix wipes his sword clean with a rag before sheathing it and turning to her.

When he approaches her, she leans away. She doesn’t understand why he’s here after their quarrel, after she denied his logic and called him a villain, after she stormed out of the temple with no intention of returning.

But his eyes find hers, even in the darkness. The anger fades from them as he closes the gap between them and crouches before her.

He cuts her bindings with a knife, and once her wrists are free Annette tears the gag away and gasps for her first breath of clean air. She rubs at her red, raw wrists as Felix frees her ankles of rope…and stares at him.

“Why did you—”

He wraps his arms around her, pulling her flush against his chest, so tightly she stops breathing.

(Or maybe that’s just her shock.)

His body - immortal or not - is warm and familiar after capture. She returns his embrace with as much strength as she can muster.

Her heart races, and for once Annette isn’t sure it’s from fear.

The first sob escapes her then, heavy as it bursts from her throat, and a second and third follow until she loses count. Earlier the idea of crying in front of Felix - the god of _war_ \- embarrassed her, but now Annette doesn’t care.

She sobs until her lungs ache and she gasps for breath and she half-fears she might suffocate before she cries herself out. She trembles with the last traces of fear, of shock, until at last she loosens her grip on Felix and remembers.

His coppery eyes flash in the dark when his fingers grasp her wrist. A wince escapes her, the skin rubbed raw stinging under his touch, but she doesn’t want him to let go.

“I know the god of death,” Felix murmurs.

“S-so what?” Annette says.

“I am of half a mind to ask him to resurrect those bastards just so I can kill them again.”

The venom in his voice startles a giggle from her, which rationally she knows is a bizarre reaction to have. But any mirth fades fast, and she wonders, “Why did you…s-save me, Felix?”

“Because I…because you…thinking of you hurt by—by _them_ makes me…sick,” Felix confesses in a quiet voice. “I had forgotten…I have not felt sick since I was a mortal.”

“O-oh,” Annette says. Warmth fills her for some reason, though she finds herself unsatisfied with his response. “H-how did you know?”

“I…looked for you,” he admits with a sigh. His silhouette shifts as he bows his head. “I did not want to—I did not want you to return to your village thinking me a—a villain.”

“I-is that all?” Annette wonders. His hand now grasps hers, and she’s not sure he’s aware of it.

Felix shakes his head before saying, “It is much of it, but Annette, I…” He sighs, heavily, so heavy her chest aches as if it’s her own. “I still cannot give you what you want. I am torn in too many directions, more than I was in life. Even men like that”—he sneers and nods in the direction of the soldiers’ corpses—”pray to me.”

“Why can’t you just choose to answer the prayers that ask for peace?” Annette demands.

“I am the god of war,” he says. “Without it, what would I be?”

“W-whatever you want,” she insists. She leans towards him - his eyes widen as she draws closer - and says, “I-I’m no longer a sacrifice from my village.”

“Yes, of course you will wish to go back,” he tells her. “I will accompany—”

“I don’t—that’s not what I meant,” Annette says, shaking her head. Her heart sinks - does she still want to return? She doesn’t know - but she plows ahead, “I spent most of my life thinking I might one day be sacrificed to fulfill an oracle’s prophecy to end the war, and then I finally was…only to learn it didn’t matter.” A lump sticks in her throat all over again; thinking about everything threatens to overwhelm her, but she _has_ to continue. “I can—I can do what I want now! I’m free, Felix. Can’t you see? And I’m only a mortal!”

“You are not…only a mortal, Annette,” Felix says. She shivers when his thumb traces her jaw down…to the cut on her neck. “You are—I do not know.” The shadow of his lips turns into a frown that she longs to wipe away, if only she knows how. “I…I want you to be right, so I will—I will try,” he promises, “for you.”

A smile spreads across her face, and she wonders if maybe, just maybe the pain of the day was worth it. “That’s all I’m asking, Felix. Thank you.”

He snorts, and she thinks he might be embarrassed when he scratches at the back of his neck. “Do not thank me yet, but…” His hand falls to his lap. “Do you still want to return—”

“No,” Annette says, quickly - perhaps too quickly, as her face warms. “I, um, I’m free of my village too. I don’t think my place is with them anymore.”

“All right,” he tells her, and she wonders if she hears hope in his voice. “I am…I do not dislike your company.”

She laughs, and when he stands and offers her a hand, she accepts it.

He holds on for a heartbeat longer than he has to, and when he lets go, she still feels the heat of his palm pressed against hers.

* * *

Annette wonders how a temple devoted to a god of war can feel so…peaceful. She closes her eyes at the first hint of a breeze rustling through leaves turning gold and crimson with a hastening autumn and hums her favorite fruit-picking song under her breath.

Pomegranates split open, hanging heavy from the tree’s branches, the seeds exposed for birds to collect. Months ago she convinced Felix to help her plant the blooming tree - that _he_ uprooted from some poor farmer’s orchard - and since she cultivated a wider sprawling garden behind the temple. Now in autumn she would have plentiful food for her (and a little to share with Felix, though he still insists he needs no such “sustenance”)…and enough to spare as a gift to her village.

A sacrifice in reverse, she thinks with some satisfaction as she clips bunches of red grapes from their twining vine. It’s not much - not nearly equivalent to what their fields once gave them - but it’s something.

A yawn splits her face when she stands. Though autumn is well on its way, the sun still shines high and hot enough to make her sleepy. Bearing a basket full of her offerings, she stumbles into the shade offered by the temple.

Of late her echoing footsteps are more comfort than a reminder of any loneliness, especially when she spots Felix lurking in the shadow of a column.

“You’re back early,” she observes, though seeing him draws a smile to her lips.

“There was…less to witness today,” he tells her, “and I wanted to hear you sing.”

Her face warms, but her smile doesn’t falter like it once might’ve. “You’re just saying that so I’ll sing a little more,” she complains, not that she means it.

“Will you?” Felix asks. His smile is slighter but no less genuine than her own when she nods.

He takes the basket from her hands, ignoring her protests that she can manage well enough (and was it not a mere few months ago that he pushed a whole deer carcass into her arms?), and leads her deeper into the temple.

It’s a routine now. Annette adds the day’s produce to a pile that Felix will deposit to a home in her village before dawn while she prods him to tell her about the war. It’s a grim topic that makes her gut twist with fresh dread every time he casts his eyes downward and admits it’s no closer to ending than it was the day she arrived at the temple and announced that she would seduce him.

But unlike then, Annette senses a change in Felix.

Once he wondered why she bothered sending provisions to a village that did not want her. The question stung - still stings when she thinks on it - but she told him their feelings didn’t matter, not really. It was her home, and she bore a responsibility for it no matter how she felt.

“Don’t you still feel some affinity for your own birthplace?” Annette asked then.

And Felix fell silent for far longer than usual. His hand tightened around the hilt of his sword before he tilted his head back and admitted, “Perhaps I do.”

She was sure then - as she is now - that the Felix she met so many months ago would’ve dismissed her question out of hand and claimed no such sentiment, but the Felix she knows now…

This is the Felix that no longer relishes his place watching over the clashing armies, who rescued her from her captors even after they quarreled, who planted the sprawling garden with her despite his claims that his hands brought death rather than nurtured life, who carries her baskets of fruit and vegetables and finds her supplies and escorts her to the stream and waits for her to bathe with his back turned.

As he helped her with the basket, Annette helps him remove his armor. Her hands fumble with the buckles strapping his breastplate in place, and she can feel the heat of his gaze on the back of her head even as she frowns in concentration.

The first time she did this she startled him; he jumped away from her touch before protesting, “I do not need your help.”

“It’s not about _need_ ,” Annette retorted, and after a brief hesitation - and with his cheeks tinted pink - he nodded and showed her what to do.

She sings while she works, nonsense lyrics that escape her lips before they even settle in her thoughts. She sings of picking fruit from trees and feeding hungry villagers and unbuckling armor and missing taciturn gods of war and—

A flush creeps into her face. She sets the breastplate beside his shield, leaning against a spindly column, unable to bring herself to look at Felix while her heart pounds because he always listens to her so intently, there’s no way he didn’t hear.

“Annette?”

His fingers brush her shoulder, softer than a whisper despite his calloused skin. They’ve touched often - simple gestures like a hand on an elbow - since that awful day early in summer, but never once did an idle touch spread fire through her flesh. “Y-yes?” she murmurs, not daring to burst this new bubble of tension surrounding them.

“Are you…all right?” he wonders, worry thick in his tone. “Did you bruise your thumb in the buckle again?”

Did he really not notice? “No, I’m fine,” she tries to dismiss. “I was just, well, thinking…kind of…that I don’t really mind that I was a sacrifice so much.”

“O-oh?” His thumb skirts over her shoulder, and she has to bite her lip to keep from shuddering.

“I never would’ve met you, right?” She swallows and, somewhere from deep within herself, finds the courage to face him again.

He blinks at her, looking enough like a startled owl she has to muffle a giggle under her hand, but then his face softens into a smile. “Then I suppose I am glad you did not leave when I demanded it.”

“Yes, it’s a good thing I’m so stubborn, isn’t it?” Her hand finds his where it still rests on his shoulder, and, growing bolder with every heartbeat he doesn’t flee, she tangles their fingers together.

Felix flushes, as dark as Annette must be, and she can’t help teasing, “I imagine it’s really strange seeing the god of war so flustered.”

He covers his face with the hand not wrapped tightly around hers and makes a peculiar strangled sound. “I’m not—yes, I guess.”

“It’s just been so…peaceful here, even with the war,” Annette adds. She sighs, a wave of contentment washing over her, and leans forward until she can press her forehead against Felix’s collarbone.

She half-expects him to stiffen as he so often does with overt affection, but instead he rests a hand against the small of her back, holding her just a little closer. His heart pounds under her cheek, and its presence surprises her as much as it comforts.

“It never was before,” Felix admits softly. “The clash of swords and the screams of dying soldiers”—she pictures him closing his eyes as if he still hears it—”always followed me everywhere.”

Annette tilts her head up to look at him, smiling ever so slightly when he glances down at the same time. “But…?”

“I think…” His tongue flicks out to wet his lips, and she can’t help tracking the motion with her eyes. “Now I hear your voice instead.”

Her eyes widen so much she fears they’ll fall out of her head and roll across the floor, and her face warms enough she must rival a volcano. So naturally she must take the only course available to her to spare herself embarrassment.

She buries her undoubtedly red face against Felix’s chest and grumbles, “Don’t say stuff like that, Felix.”

“Like…what?” He sounds so carelessly confused even as his arm winds around her waist.

“Something so sweet, like you—like you have feelings for me or something!” Annette’s fingers clutch at his tunic while bizarrely out of place tears prick at her eyes. Her chest aches, just a bit, because she can’t imagine a world where Felix - mortal or god - might l—

“But I do…”

Annette’s grip on him slackens, her jaw dropping, but she doesn’t dare look up. “W-what?”

“I do have feelings for you…or something.”

She thinks her heart might actually burst from her chest and bounce around the floor along with her eyes. Slowly she lifts her head and tries to remember how to breathe.

Felix’s expression is solemn when he meets her gaze, solemn and…wistful, she thinks, which she can understand. But he tears his eyes away so quickly she wonders if she imagined it. “I, um…”

“I’m…a mortal,” she reminds him at last. “How could you—”

“How can I not?” he says. His gold irises spark with intensity as he cups her jaw and tilts her head back again. “You trespassed on _my_ temple and all but made it yours.”

Annette smiles sheepishly, shuffling her feet. “It sounds really bad when you say it like that.”

“Well, I am not sure I understand it either,” Felix admits, his eyes shifting away from hers, “but I, um, do not mind spending the rest of eternity learning how.”

A perfectly and lovely flutter fills her stomach and rises into her chest. Her fingers close around his wrist and her eyes shut as his breath blooms across her cheek, and in the eons and heartbeats between this moment and the next Annette wonders if this is how godhood feels.

When Felix kisses her, it answers a prayer she never thought to make. When his lips slide against hers and his fingers comb through her hair and his touch shoots lightning over her skin, Annette feels safe, and wanted, and loved.

His arms wrap tightly around her, as tightly as she holds onto him, even as he pulls away and drops his forehead against hers. Her head spins, so she keeps her eyes shut.

This time when his lips brush against her cheek, almost hesitantly, Annette cups the back of his neck and whispers, “I love you too, you know.”

“Another thing I do not understand,” he confesses.

“Well, like you said,” Annette says, grinning so wide her cheeks might hurt later, “I have time to make you understand.” She kisses his chin, then his lips again, just because she can.

(And the surprised sigh that escapes him and how he melts into her fills her with a different sort of warmth than before.)

This time when they part, Felix says, “I think it might also take eternity to understand your songs.”

Annette’s eyes shoot open to glare at him, but when his lips quirk into a smirk that she once didn’t think possible beyond battle, she answers him with a smile of her own.

* * *

When the oracle next inhales the fumes in the light of the full moon, and when the mother goddess steals into her body and whispers secrets known only to them, two armies that once clashed so bitterly lay down their weapons.

After years of ceaseless conflict, after decades of rivalry without end, the leaders grow weary of the stalemate and negotiate a peace before retreating to their own territories to lick their wounds and heal their scars. Perhaps they will fight another day, the mother goddess tells her oracle, and perhaps that war will go worse. But in this moment the god of war at last indulges the prayers of the beleaguered village once caught in the midst of the fighting.

After years of fruitlessly sacrificing maidens to appease him, the god of war hears their pleas. After those years of suffering and in the wake of the armies’ retreat, the village sows their fields anew and flourishes.

They forget the last maiden sent to entreat the god of war at his temple, but they will always remember that the war ended when the goddess of peace captivated the god of war with her song…

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it, and if you did, I'd love to hear from you! Thank you for reading <3


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